OT Question on audio downloads from youtube

[Jim web]

In article <23D53A18-A768-4B45-8B96-5710E1070530 at gmail.com>,
VeniVidiVideo
<venividivideoed at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 22, 2020, at 12:20 PM, Jim web <web at audiomisc.co.uk> wrote:
> > I've never looked at uploading anything for YT. The question in my
> > mind is as follows:
> > 
> > Yes, it generally offers a range of download formats. But what format
> > was *uploaded* in the first place? I wonder if getting the 'best'
> > audio from YT simply may mean the least harm from a transcode YT has
> > done.  Or are uploaders expected to provide multiple versions? I
> > suspect not.
> > 
> > If my suspicion is correct, the 'best' would be to find the version as
> > uploaded, I assume.

> That's incorrect. 

Erm... I think there may be a misunderstanding... Possibly you misunderstod
my use of 'best' in inverted commas.

> Especially since youtube-dl targets YouTube, there are usually multiple
> versions available to be downloaded.

Yes. I knew that, hence my comment to that effect.

>  YouTube routinely maintains multiple resolutions of the video at least.
>  There may be multiple bitrates or formats for the audio as well, but
> I'm not sure about that. 

Yes, I knew that, also.

> The uploader doesn't have to worry about the multiple video resolutions.

Yes. Ditto.

However this means that the uploader sends one specific format.
cf below.


>  YouTube takes care of the downcovert automatically. They do that so
> people can stream videos with very different bandwidths, from 3G phone
> connections to Gigabit fiber connections.

Yes. As above. However *when* one of the YT-available output formats is
exactly the same as that uploaded, do YT force a needless 'non-conversion'
on that along with creating the others?

FWIW Usually I run a routine to list all the formats, then choose the one I
want. However since I don't know what was uploaded I tend to go for 'best'
since that probably does less damage than choosing a poorer option.

The problem is that 'up conversion' doesn't give you any genuine into that
wasn't in the source being 'up converted' and may lose some. And may simply
bloat the file. Whereas if you can find a 'pass the parcel' you can dodge
any loss or bloat.

This leads to another question in my mind: Can the YT-dl user tell which
version on offer might be the same as the uploaded one? This would be
handy, but I suspect it can't be done because the info isn't made
available.

Jim

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